Google reportedly will not Renew its contract for Project Maven

Google reportedly will not renew its contract with the US Department of Defense who is working on AI technology program known as Project Maven. The project will expire in 2019, and Google reports their unavailability after 2019 which clearly shows the company does not want to continue this controversial activity which involves analyzing drone footages.

According to Gizmodo, On Friday Google Cloud CEO Diane Greene announced this undertaking at a meeting with employees. He further said that Google does not desire to pursue anymore because this project turns out to be a terrible decision for the company and to aid Military services is not their policy. The company’s collaboration with the US Department has been revealed in March when Google employees reported against Maven project. Employees said this project involves the killing of overseas people with the help of Autonomous aerial vehicle and the company is just using them and AI software to contribute building this kind of weaponry.

Though several employees resigned in protest and thousands signed a petition to Google CEO Sundar Pichai about terminating the contract. Meanwhile, Google has defended themselves by saying they have just contributed an open-source AI software which has nothing to do with drone warfare. On the other hand, New York Timesreported a set of Emails which clearly shows Google was in support of Project Maven and how the company executives consider this a golden chance to work with military and intelligence agen

Gizmodo reports also show that Google executives plan to develop machine learning algorithms for the Pentagon which can surveil the whole city. Besides, the Senior executives were also concerned about what kind of image it would present once the news gets public.

So it seems like Google is in trouble and receiving pressure from both the employees and outside to terminate the contract. At the same time, Greene announced a new code of conduct on 18th May, from “Don’t be evil” to “Do the right thing.”